“We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” Franklin D. Roosevelt Nothing can kill a corporate social media campaign quicker than fear. This great cause of many problems is the number one barrier to corporate adoption of social media. Consider these types of fear. Fear of losing control: The old saw is back! But do [...]

Connie Reece writes Every Dot Connects and is the team leader of Social Media Club Austin. Her approach of connecting people, developing relationships and starting conversations drives her success as a social media expert. She’s also got a wicked Scrabble game. In this Buzz Bin interview, Connie discusses her views of social media in Austin, [...]

As social media consultants and professionals, there may be times when we struggle to create an effective voice. Whether it is for our clients to counsel them on developing a personal voice that also delivers a brand message, or for our own blogs where we are sharing our ideas about social media and how businesses [...]

Following up on last week’s Now Is Gone case study, here are some statistics from Dell Computer on their social media efforts. In case you missed it, Jeff Jarvis reversed “Dell Hell” with a great article in the current edition of BusinessWeek. At start of program, 49% of blog posts were negative. Today, overall tonality [...]

Great marketing is simple (but not easy). It communicates obvious value to a customer. It should be a no-brainer. It’s even easier when the product or service does its own marketing. Breath mints for construction workers and automotive maintenance engineers is not obvious. Until now. Wrench Mints changes that. “When your breath is broke… Fix [...]

The blogosphere has been abuzz the past week with many posts about the future of PR, the press release, the social media release, and overall relationships between clients, agencies, and each other. Social media’s impact is evidenced here in the Guardian Unlimited, showing that with the boom in MySpace and Facebook popularity, PR firms have [...]

Today marks the start of the annual PRSA conference in Philly. Invariably this conference spawns a bunch of posts about what’s wrong with the PR industry. In spite of this meeting, PR industry leaders cannot affect the changes necessary to reverse the public’s negative perception of PR. Confession: I used to be a member of [...]

Conversations on blogs can get pretty heated sometimes. Additional comments from the author or continued conversation in the comments section may provide counterpoints worthy of a response. But sometimes they don’t. Many organizations and individuals make the mistake of believing that they need to get the last word in these debates. Not so. Companies and [...]

Earlier this week, Seth Godin had a short post about a woman’s blog called I Heart Zappos. In the post, the woman details how she had ordered all of these shoes from Zappos for her ill mother, and then her mother dies and they never got around to sending back the shoes. When Zappos calls [...]